


a poison that never stung

by zhelaniye



Series: there is only one war [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23197930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhelaniye/pseuds/zhelaniye
Summary: Cullen has never been able to tell the difference between pain and joy, but maybe Lavellan's whispers can be louder than the lyrium's song. Perhaps there can be a different end for him.
Relationships: Male Lavellan/Cullen Rutherford
Series: there is only one war [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629265
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	a poison that never stung

If you were to ask Cullen, he’d tell you it had been a very long day. It had started out fine, innocently enough, seemingly just another day in the endless blur of the war. By the time the sun had been high enough over the frostbacks to shed any real heat, though, a pressure had been building in the insides of Cullen’s skull. 

_ It’s just tiredness _ , he tells himself when he dropped the report the recruit was eagerly handing him, hand unable to close around it.  _ I just need a day off _ , he thinks when Leliana’s face blurred in front of his eyes as she talked and he had to hold tight onto every ounce of his awareness to be able to make sense of her words. 

He repeated these statements out loud to Dorian - and then Varric, and before the afternoon was well and truly over, even to Josephine - when a stammer that had been abandoned for so long he himself usually forgets the true meaning of tongue-tied makes a subtle reappearance in his speech. 

But then he hears it, as he pitilessly climbs the long steps towards his tower, the song. It is low, a whisper, almost muffled by the tired grunts of the recruits in the training grounds beside him - but he hears it, nevertheless. Cullen thinks he would hear it underwater, deaf, or when he finally joins the Maker again. It’s there, under his skin, still swimming in his blood, etched in his bone, like an itch he cannot scratch, and sometimes it burns as it if was trying to claw its way out of his body, beseeching him, begging him to listen, to fall into the arms of the song again.

The lyrium is a cruel mistress, and it had been a very, very long day.

Cullen grunts as he tries to get out of his leather gloves and curses himself and his stubbornness for insisting on wearing several layers of armor at all times. He feels exposed, smaller without one, usually, but today he cannot make sense of the blighted laces keeping the clothes together, and he tugs on them inelegantly, frustrated, trying to ignore the noise beneath his bones as it mounts to a blinding pain. 

And then there’s a soft knock on his door and it takes everything in Cullen not to cry out - for the intruder to leave, or for help. 

“Commander?”, a voice floats in, and this time the curse that escapes Cullen’s throat is most definitely directed towards the Maker, who obviously had to be delighting in his most complete and utter misery.

“Inquisitor”, he says, gritting his teeth against the way his surroundings swim in front of his eyes. He shuts his eyes tightly and opens them to an stabilized room around him before saying. “Come in”.

Lavellan enters the room, filling it in a manner than should be unusual for a man a few inches shorter than him, but has stopped surprising him many months ago. His green eyes quickly fix on him after a brief inspection of his surroundings -  _ and why is Cullen so aware of the books strewn around his desk now of all times  _ \- and his vallaslin dances gracefully on his forehead when he frowns at him. He should not be endearing when he frowns, Cullen thinks, detachedly.

“Is everything alright, Your Grace?”, he asks, pointedly ignoring the raised eyebrow the courtesy gets him.

“I could ask the same to you”, he says, “after all, it’s not every day the Commander of the Inquisition misses a meeting”. 

_ “What- _ ” is as far as Cullen’s thoughts go before he blanches. He stands up abruptly and nearly trips over, but cannot find it in himself to spare a thought to that, not with his mortification and guilt fighting to formulate an apology and only succeeding in making him trip over his words. Maker’s breath, he’s going to have to move to the Anderfels before the day is over, at this rate. 

“Inquisitor- Your Grace, I- Maker, I’m so sorry, I-”, he tries, before seeing Lavellan’s raised hand.

The small smile that graces the elf’s expression is not angry, far from it, but Cullen hadn’t really expected anger from the man, not after so many months of watching his mesmerizing relentless compassion at work. But he  _ had _ expected a reprimand. Hoped for it, even. 

Instead, the hand that sets on his shoulder, close enough to his neck that he thinks he would be able to feels its heat if he focused, is warm and solid, and the smile on the mage’s face could almost be described as playful. He shakes a hand in the air, as if physically brushing off the incident. 

“Now, now, Commander, it’s not as if Josephine hasn’t had to drag me by the collar to some of the council meetings, isn’t it?”

“I-”, Cullen starts, but a sharp stab of pain to his temples is enough to remind him of the fact that every inch of his body was screaming for something it could not have anymore and it was tearing him apart from the inside. His words get cut off, but he still has the presence of mind to grab tightly onto the sturdy desk to avoid toppling down to his knees in front of the Inquisitor. 

Lavellan doesn’t rush to his aid, which Cullen is deeply grateful for. There’s nothing he despises as much as being coddled. But he does approach him, calmly, and wordlessly ties off his half undone leather laces, letting the gloves fall on the desk and exposing Cullen’s unnaturally cold hands. Lavellan’s own hands hover over his, uncertainly, for just a fleeting moment before dropping back to his sides. 

Cullen turns towards the corner of him room, where a servant has made sure there was a jar full of fresh water - and he’s never been so grateful for the ice that never melts that clings to Skyhold’s stones. It washes down the faint taste of metal in his mouth, allowing him a brief respite, where he looks around as clarity fleetingly returns, finally able to focus on the man in front of him, looking at him with his head tilted. For someone who prided himself in being open and earnest to the point of wielding it as deadly weapons, Lavellan could be completely unreadable at times. 

“Was there something you wished to discuss with me at the meeting?”, Cullen asked.

“You’re not well”, Lavellan said, and silenced Cullen with a steely look before he could even formulate his counterargument. “It can wait until morning”. 

Cullen felt an uncomfortable apprehension at the thought of Lavellan seeing him like this, but tried to bury it at the bottom of his mind, even as he said “don’t let your trip to my quarters be in vain, Inquisitor”.

He smiled, confusedly, as if Cullen had asked something truly incomprehensible from him. “No trip to your quarters is wasted, Commander, you should know that by now”.

And he says it so matter-of-factly, as if it was a fact that could never be up for discussion, the fact that he enjoys spending time with him, that it does not even deserve to be mentioned twice. Cullen’s next words come out raspy, and he’s unsure he can blame it on the migraine. 

“Very well, then”, he says, and gestures to the chair discarded in the corner of his room that he had unwillingly began to think of as Lavellan’s. “Make yourself at home, Inquisitor”.

And he does. It’s not the first time Lavellan’s steps had strayed from their path and had found their way up to Cullen’s turret. And at some point, it just seemed easier to refurbish the study a bit, just enough for him to feel comfortable in it, to have a chair and - Andraste preserve him - his own mug, right there amongst Cullen’s scarce possessions, to be able to come and go as he pleases at any time. 

Lavellan launches immediately into a tale of Sera’s latest mischief, one that involved the Iron Bull, Varric and, most worryingly, Solas. The acute pain fades into the background for a bit, and so do thoughts about this thing, whatever it is, they have between them - this soft, secretive beast they both danced around, lest they startle it and it devours everything in its wake. If Cullen had learned one lesson, it had been to let the feelings swirling beneath his ribs rest, for hitting them with sticks repeatedly always spoke unpleasant truths. 

And it was good, the respite Lavellan brought him, it was warm and comfortable and he wrapped it around himself so tightly he barely felt his hands begin to shake until the mage stared down at his hands, stopping halfway through an animated tale of the latest incident of Cassandra terrorizing a new recruit. 

“I merely need to rest”, said Cullen when his attention starts to waver, brushing aside the elf’s concerns, despite knowing inwardly he would not sleep in days, and the shaking would only get worse from now on. 

Lavellan hums, considering his next words. He opens his mouth to speak, and he does so slowly, carefully, the perfect image of calmness. But his hands twitch restlessly by his side, and Cullen is confused, and weakened, so when he offers his help, offers to stay, Cullen says yes.

And he shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. Knows a Cullen that did not have the lyrium’s song floating in his mind would tell him not to let the other man stay so close, when his guard is so low. He knows they are waging a war, and knows the stakes, and the whims of the heart, and he remembers Lavellan’s body lying still in the snow beneath the ashes of Haven, and the way his insides had turn to ice to match the place he had taken to call home at the sight. He knows there are thousands of men under his command, far more important than himself and whatever his soul might be crying out for, who depend on his ability to remain focused. And he knows there is something lurking in the darkness, waiting for its chance to jump on the man like a beast, sinking its poisonous claws into his neck. But he’s hurting, and Lavellan’s eyes are greener than he remember them being, and there is only so much he can deny himself in the end. So he nods, and Lavellan smiles and stays.

“I suppose I wouldn’t get much done if I slash my own throat while shaving”, Cullen says, going for irritable and landing closer to bashful. It earns him a chuckle, and the warmth that spreads on his chest is just annoying at this point.

The water splashes as Lavellan wiggles his fingers inside it, warming it, as he chatters idly. Cullen had discarded the furs around his neck and stood awkwardly, supporting his weight against his desk, clutching his shaking hands and frowning down at them, as if the force of his displeasure alone would scare his body back into submission. 

It’s a peculiar thing, how reality twists and stretches when Cullen tilts his head back and allows Lavellan’s blade access to his neck. Cullen fights to keep his eyes open and his breathing steady as his heart jumps wildly in his chest. He thinks it’s impossible for Lavellan not to hear it in its struggle to break through his ribcage, he imagines even Blackwall, down in his stables, should be wondering where that deafening noise comes from.

He feels both detached and acutely aware of everything, from the slight warmth of Lavellan’s fingertips on his chin to the way the waning sunlight filters through the mage’s eyelashes casting shadows on the freckles on his cheeks. The blade makes a light scratching sound when it slides against his skin and he’s grateful for the slight cover it provides to his own laboured breathing. 

Somewhere, between the faint brush against his forehead of one of Lavellan’s strands of hair that had managed to pry its way out of his braids and the way his own hand curled in the fabric of the elf’s shirt as if it had developed a will of its own, his pain subsided from a raging storm to a quiet lull under his skull, stirring to remind him of its presence but allowing his thoughts to race.

Lucidity has the unpleasant downside of bringing back a modicum of self-control, however, and he draws back, not enough to put some real distance but enough to make Lavellan’s grip slip. He feels a faint pain in his jaw and knows the blade has nicked his skin. 

And then Cullen watches, helpless and unwilling to stop it, as Lavellan wets his fingertip on his lips and presses it against the cut.

“You’re blushing”, he says, in a hushed tone, not quite meeting Cullen’s eyes.

And there is a precipice, a choice Cullen had tried for so long to avoid, but it feels now as if it had been made for him long ago, it feels as if the way his hand uncurls from the shirt and settles on Lavellan’s hip was meant to be, as if the way the mage stops pressing the cut and moves his hand to grip the back of Cullen’s hair was directed by something stronger than the both of them.

Cullen tilts his head back and he can feel Lavellan’s breath on his lips for a second, warm and inviting and then lips press against his, slowly, carefully, as if not wishing to startle him. It was not a kiss, not really, just a small pressure on his lips, but something inside him explodes, something that he had thought he’d tamed a decade ago, burying it under duty and pain and a misplaced thirst for revenge. He had never allowed himself anything, it was just not in his nature, but every man has a breaking point and Cullen has not known where he stands in a long time.

There’s something big and painful roaring in his chest as he presses his lips against the Lavellan’s this time, something that sets itself aflame when the elf makes a choked nose in the back of his throat and kisses back, opening his mouth to him.

Cullen burns, and aches, and the beast inside his ribcage is tearing him open wide under the touch of Lavellan’s fingers slipping under his shirt, caressing his collarbone as he kisses him. The templar’s own hands roam, feeling defined muscle under the thin scratchy clothing Lavellan insists on wearing much to Josephine’s dismay, scattered with scar tissue like a book whose secrets are being privately revealed to him. It feels holy, the brush of the elf’s hair against his neck and the feel of his body curled against his almost purring in contentment, like honey on his lips in a way the chant of light hasn’t felt in many, many years. 

The urgency, and the painful desire, and the fire that swirls on his veins all die down to a manageable thing, something that allows the flow of oxygen to return to his lungs, and the kiss slows but doesn’t stop. 

His hands stop holding onto Lavellan’s hips and shoulders tight enough to bruise in an useless attempt to breach the barriers that separate them - as if he could never be satisfied until the man was physically lodged beneath his ribs, where he has belonged for far longer than Cullen is willing to admit. Now, his fingertips travel idly across his nape, his arms, the exposed skin of his back, tracing swirling, meaningless patterns, marking his skin invisibly just as sure as the vallaslin in his face does.

Lavellan’s name escapes his lips reverently, and he breaks the kiss to press his blooming smile on the mage’s neck. He feels his lips on his skin this time, pressing themselves upon every part of him they can find - his earlobe, his temples, the cheeks where his stubble had begun to become scratchy.

Belatedly, Cullen realizes the pain is gone. It hasn’t disappeared, exactly, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing else will ever really matter but this - this moment of peace, with the last rays of sunlight gently setting his room alight, surrounding them in warmth. And it seems impossible to find this here, now, in the heart of a frozen mountaintop, in the middle of a war against gods, but for the first time since a child in a small Fereldan village put on his leather boots and closed the door of his room forever to follow the path of the righteous sword with dreams on his head and determination in his eyes, he feels at home.

**Author's Note:**

> idk i love cullen and i have feelings. also, the title is from hozier's sedated.


End file.
